How to Silently Install Resilio Sync

This article outlines how to install, remove and run Resilio Sync silently so that there is no (or minimal) user interaction necessary or possible during the installation process, and while invoking and running the application. It also discusses the situations where silent installation and/or running is not possible. The platforms discussed in this document include Windows, Mac and Linux.

SILENT INSTALLATION AND REMOVAL

The process of preparing and executing a silent install varies by platform. This process is the easiest on the Macintosh, a little more complicated on Linux, and a lot more challenging on Windows.

Installation Steps Common to All Platforms

On any platform, the users performing the installation process may need to modify rules for the resident firewall to permit Sync to accept incoming (and possibly create outgoing) network connections; the description of how to do this is (mostly) outside of the scope of this document.

WINDOWS

SILENT INSTALLATION

The Sync executable file isn't an MSI (Windows Installer) file. For an installation that is as silent as possible, run the following command from a NT command-line terminal:

ResilioSync.exe /PERFORMINSTALL /S

User Account Control on Windows will display a confirmation dialog asking if the user will allow changes to system configuration as part of the installation process.

Handling the User Account Control Dialog

If the user accepts the changes, Sync is installed, including icons, Program Files files, startup menu items, Windows Explorer context menu items, and registry entries. However, the Sync program does not run at the end of installation; the program must be started manually after the installation process completes.

If the user chooses to reject the changes, the installation process proceeds as though the command did not request a silent install: the Windows firewall dialog is presented, and the Sync web UI appears as part of running the program.To make this process not require user interaction, it may be necessary to run the installation process from an account that already has active administrative privileges.

Configuring Windows Firewall

By default, the Windows Firewall dialog shows that Sync will be able to accept incoming connections on private networks, and will not be able to accept incoming connections on public networks. If it is necessary to make changes in Windows Firewall to allow incoming connections on public networks, modify firewall rules using calls to the netsh command-line tool using the advfirewall command.

SILENT REMOVAL

Full Silent removal of Sync is not possible on Windows, therefore some steps will have to be performed manually:

Run ResilioSync.exe /UNINSTALL /S /REMSETTINGS - this will delete the ResilioSync.exe file.

You may need to reboot the computer before removing the DLLs, because the File Manager doesn't unload the DLLs as part of the uninstallation process.

MACINTOSH

SILENT INSTALLATION

An administrator can install Sync on a Macintosh using the command line by executing the following commands:

hdiutil attach ResilioSync.dmg

sudo cp -R /Volumes/Resilio\ Sync/Resilio\ Sync.app /Applications

hdiutil detach /Volumes/Resilio\ Sync/

SILENT REMOVAL

Perform uninstallation by deleting the application folder created in step 2 of the silent installation procedure. This may fail, with a message including "because some of its plugins [were] in use", if the shared library is loaded by the Mac file manager for Sync's context menu entry. Open Activity Monitor and stop all SyncFinderExtension processes.

LINUX/FREE BSD

SILENT INSTALLATION

The Linux installation file is a gzipped tar archive containing three files:

rslsync (executable binary)

LICENSE.TXT

README

The README file contains instructions on how to run rslsync. Silent installation is easy as long as the installation process has the privileges necessary to place the files in the desired locations; this can be enabled by using sudo to run the installation process as root.

Pre-installation Decisions

The person setting up the installation will need to:

choose a location for the rslsync executable

choose a writable storage directory in the file system that will be used for storing settings files and a pid (process ID) file.

create a configuration file (see more here), define storage folder there. If not chosen Sync will create .sync in the current location from which it's launched.